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Sunday Morning Classes for Adults in June
9:45 -10:45 in the West Wing of the Parish Center
June 3 and 10 The Abba Prayer of Jesus: A Prayer for the Coming of God's Kingdom of Justice and Peace, presented by parishioner, Paul Dokecki, PhD
John Dominic Crossan, emeritus at DePaul University, is generally acknowledged to be the premier historical Jesus scholar in the world. He was a founding member of the renowned Jesus Seminar. He is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, and former Catholic priest who has produced numerous scholarly and popular works. Some of you may recall that Father Mallett invited him to Christ the King several years ago.
In 2010 Crossan published The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer. Part One of the presentation presents Crossan's analysis of the Lord's Prayer's structure and major ideas, in which he demonstrates how the prayer "is from the heart of Judaism through the mouth of Christianity to the conscience of the earth." Part Two presents a line-by-line analysis of the Prayer's meaning. Perhaps the major theme in the prayer, Crossan shows, pursues answers to these questions: "Do all God's children have enough? If not-and the biblical answer is "not"-how must things change here below so that all God's people have a fair, equitable, and just proportion of God's world? The Lord's Prayer proclaims that necessary change as both (1) revolutionary manifesto and (2) hymn of Hope."-- ♦ --
June 17 - July 15 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, presented by Victor Judge
As a vigorous activist in the cultural, social, and literary awakening that converged in the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) bore witness against the stereotyping that denied the multifarious heritage of African Americans. A literary artist, folklorist, and anthropologist, Hurston gave racial health to African Americans by representing them as complex and undiminished participants in the human condition, and her masterpiece titled Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, illustrates this cultural-social-literary achievement. The lecture series will be presented by Victor Judge who serves as the assistant academic dean at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.-- ♦ --